


Five Times Furiosa Met Max (And One Time She Didn't)

by cptsdcarlosdevil



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Economics and Environmental Plans Save The Day, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsdcarlosdevil/pseuds/cptsdcarlosdevil
Summary: When the Warboys came to take her, she killed four of them; the fifth fled. She would go to battle riding his motorcycle after he was hung for cowardice.  They called her Furiosa.





	

I. 

It was a hard land, and the girl went hungry most nights. The mothers had spoken of how the blood would not come to one too small, and had given extra food to the girls about to bloom. The girl now thought it a blessing, that famine might stave off her blooming.

Still, blood stained her thighs. 

She could not fight but she could steal, and so in the afternoon she slipped into the city and picked up a bandana here, a jacket there, and she buried the rags so far in the desert that no one would find them but the lizards.

She was quick, but he was quicker; he caught her hand as it reached to the fabric in his back pocket, and she looked up into dark eyes. He grunted. It was a question.

"The Warlord would take me," she said, "if he knew I bled." 

Keeping firm control of her wrist with one hand, he reached into his pocket with the other. A knife. She raised her head proudly. She would die with honor, and perhaps Valhalla would take her, if the green land of the mothers would not. 

But he did not slit her throat; he placed the knife in her hand, and let go of her wrist white from his fingers, and walked away, and she understood. 

When the Warboys came to take her, she killed four of them; the fifth fled. She would go to battle riding his motorcycle after he was hung for cowardice. 

They called her Furiosa.

II.

They tried to crown her Warlord. She shook her head, sharply. She was an Imperator. Let Immortan Joe be the last of the Warlords. His bleached-white bones, displayed at the gate, would cherish the title. 

Gas Town and the Bullet Farm were undefended. She took them easily. 

One of the mothers had been something called an "economics professor" before. She had no title, but they called her the Peacequeen, the Lady of the Waters, and it was generally put about that as the Imperator ruled in battle so the Peacequeen ruled in the day-to-day. Furiosa did not understand the magic of the little black lines, but Capable took to it quickly, and the mother spent hours imparting her wisdom; when the mother died, Capable became Peacequeen in her turn.

She did not think often of Max, whose plan it was, and who had left before anyone had noticed that he was gone. 

III. 

As much as Furiosa and her lady love delighted in bed together, she would not get her lady love with child, and the Citadel demanded an heir. 

She could not use a man of the Citadel. She still had to slay a man, occasionally, who strutted and raped and forgot that this was her water, her women, her territory. Would he not boast of having accomplished what Furiosa could not? Would he not take ownership over the child? Would he not demand favors?

She briefly considered killing her chosen father after her love was safely with child, but Furiosa was an Imperator, not a Warlord. She did not kill for sport. 

There was, then, only one choice.

She put the word out among her people, offered a sizeable award in water-money. He arrived on her doorstep two months later. 

"I would have come, you didn't have to drag me," he said once she explained.

He stayed for a season. Furiosa would have kept him until her love swelled with child, but he had begun to stare out the window of his high room. 

She overheard a conversation a month after the birth. "The Imperator's got big enough balls," boasted one man to another, "that she knocked the girl up." It was satisfactory.

IV.

“You are injured,” Furiosa said. 

Max grunted. Furiosa applied a little of that precious stuff Capable called an “antibiotic”, then bound his wound, a field-dressing, as if once again they were in the desert. Max would not permit another to touch his wounds. 

“You grow old,” Furiosa said. “Less sharp. Less fast. Less strong. They will take you, if you continue to live as you do. It is lucky one of our scavenging parties recognized you.”

Max grunted again. 

“Why not settle down here?” Furiosa said. “You will be welcomed. Honored. You have much wisdom to teach to the young who will go out and make war. You need not be idle.”

Max shook his head. “The road is open,” he said. “I must be on it.” 

“You will die,” Furiosa said. 

“I will not,” Max said. He did not speak again that night, no matter how fervent her entreaties.

Furiosa had not understood. She had cursed the folly of men, who thought glory was found in dying before their time. Furiosa, who had been taught by the mothers in the green land, knew better. Glory was black lines on pages and enough water for all and suckling babies who need not fear famine or marauder or Warlord. 

V.

The little black lines that made the Citadel prosperous did not generate their own magic. The scavengers of the wastes soon came to understand that gasoline and bullets and water, all would be yours, if you brought the Peacequeen of the Citadel one of those 'books' that previously had mostly been used for kindling. 

The library filled one room, then two. Children learned their letters; Furiosa's own daughter, Green, could write her own name pretty as you please. When people sickened, now, sometimes they could be cured. The Citadel captured the rays of the sun and at night shone like a star itself. When the day's work was done, Capable read stories written before the world was ruined. Furiosa led her first scavenger party in a year to find a copy of the seventh Harry Potter book. 

Capable and Furiosa were receiving petitioners when Max appeared, carrying papers. "I hear of the light that shines in darkness," he said, "as far away as the salt sea."

Capable smiled. "Thank you."

Max dropped the papers on the floor. "For you."

Capable's look was first one of puzzlement, then of sudden recognition. "Environmental plans!" she said. 

Furiosa never looked ignorant in front of her warriors. However, she had mastered a way of setting her jaw that meant that, while she certainly understood what was going on, perhaps someone else in the room would want a review. 

"The Peacequeen-That-Was told me about them," Capable said. "In the old days, people would record, oh, all sorts of information about how things worked-- how much water there was where, what animals lived there, how everything was connected. These talk about the water in the Citadel, so we understand where it comes from and how much of it there is and when it's replenished--"

"So we don't have to run out," Furiosa said in sudden recognition. 

Capable nodded.

When they looked up, Max was gone. He hadn't even collected his water-reward. 

I. 

Furiosa was old, and her daughter had long since taken over war parties. 

His face was unfamiliar; his eyes light where Max's were dark, his face narrow where Marx's was broad, his hairline a sharp widow's peak. 

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Max," he said.

"Where did you come from?" she asked.

"I was a cop, before the world was killed," he said.

"You can't be a day older than thirty," Furiosa said. "The world was killed before I was born, and I am old."

The man did not speak.

"Do you remember me?" Furiosa asked.

"I remember so many things," the man said. “Blood, and death. War. Beginnings and endings.”

And Furiosa understood.

Her Max had died, somewhere in the desert, stabbed over water or women or gasoline. His body had wasted away into nothing or been consumed by the cannibals who wasted no part of the body. And someone, gruff, rugged, not quite right in the head, with a heart softer than he knew, had picked up the jacket. 

As long as motorbikes revved in the desert, there would always be a Max.

Furiosa nodded. “You will always be welcome here, Max,” she said, with a peculiar emphasis on the ‘always’. “I shall have Capable write it down on the paper, along with your distinguishing features.” She could not resist the urge to add, “You do look different these days.”

Max grunted. When she blinked, he was gone.


End file.
